Published 4:00 am, Friday, November 14, 2008

Terreon Hunt, 2 years old, makes faces in the mirror while Terrance Powell cuts Ahmaond Balls' hair on Wednesday Nov. 12, 2008, at The Shop in the Visiticion Valley district in San Francisco, Calif.

Terreon Hunt, 2 years old, makes faces in the mirror while Terrance Powell cuts Ahmaond Balls' hair on Wednesday Nov. 12, 2008, at The Shop in the Visiticion Valley district in San Francisco, Calif.

Photo: Lacy Atkins, The Chronicle

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Joe Tan watches over his son Thompson as they walk up to their car, Wednesday Nov. 12, 2008, from daycare in Visitacion Valley district in San Francisco, Calif.

Joe Tan watches over his son Thompson as they walk up to their car, Wednesday Nov. 12, 2008, from daycare in Visitacion Valley district in San Francisco, Calif.

Photo: Lacy Atkins, The Chronicle

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Steve Gibson walks to work at the Magnet health clinic in the Castro district on Thursday Nov. 13, 2008 in SanFrancisco , Calif.

Steve Gibson walks to work at the Magnet health clinic in the Castro district on Thursday Nov. 13, 2008 in SanFrancisco , Calif.

Photo: Lacy Atkins, The Chronicle

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Calixto Robles, who lives in the Castro district, voted no of Proposition 8.

Calixto Robles, who lives in the Castro district, voted no of Proposition 8.

Photo: Lacy Atkins, The Chronicle

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Dan Cusick watches as Stephen Ritchings works outside the Castro Country Club.

Dan Cusick watches as Stephen Ritchings works outside the Castro Country Club.

Photo: Lacy Atkins, The Chronicle

Some areas of S.F. voted to ban same-sex marriage

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For all the talk of San Francisco values, a Chronicle analysis of how the city voted on the state's same-sex marriage ban shows a city geographically divided on the issue - and voting trends that turn San Francisco's typical political spectrum on its head.

One in 4 San Franciscans voted in favor of Proposition 8, far fewer than the 52 percent who voted to ban same-sex marriage statewide. But a closer look shows race, age and education influenced voters more than anything else - even among those living in one of the world's most gay-friendly cities.

Voters in 54 of San Francisco's 580 precincts supported the ban, with a high of 65 percent of voters favoring it in parts of Chinatown and downtown. More than half of voters in large swaths of Bayview-Hunters Point, Visitacion Valley, the Excelsior and areas around Lake Merced also voted to ban same-sex marriage.

Neighborhoods including the Marina, Laurel Heights and Mission Bay - which almost always vote more conservatively than neighborhoods such as Bayview and Chinatown - voted overwhelmingly against Prop. 8.

"With the racial and religious overprint that we're seeing, the standard San Francisco politics get thrown out the window on this one," said political consultant David Latterman, who further crunched the precinct-by-precinct voting results that The Chronicle obtained this week from the Department of Elections.

"This issue is very separate from what we usually think of as liberal and conservative," he said.

The trends

Latterman said the issue played out in San Francisco the same way it plays out everywhere else: Race, age and education were big influences in one's vote on Prop. 8. Latterman did not factor in religion, but exit polls throughout California showed a strong church affiliation correlated with a vote in favor of the ban among all racial groups.

In San Francisco, the more white people living in a precinct, the more likely it was to vote against the proposition. The opposite was true for precincts with many Asian or African American residents.

Voters ages 18 to 29 were overwhelmingly against the measure, while those older 60 were overwhelmingly for it. And those with only a high school education mostly voted for the measure, while those who graduated from college were largely against it.

Income did not correlate with San Franciscans' votes on Prop. 8, Latterman said. For example, 65 percent of voters living in the few blocks around Bloomingdale's downtown - including posh condos inside the Four Seasons and St. Regis Hotel - voted to ban same-sex marriage.

But only 35 percent of those living in the stately mansions of St. Francis Wood and 24 percent of those in Sea Cliff voted for the ban. Latterman guessed that businesspeople moving downtown are newly arrived from other places, whereas the others have been "part of the city's fabric for a long time."

Speaking of St. Francis Wood, the neighborhood was the most conservative of any in the city, according to Latterman's Progressive Voting Index, which looks at how the city's precincts have voted on a variety of controversial ballot measures. That includes a measure that called for impeaching President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney and an initiative to ban firearms.

Where a precinct fell on Latterman's index had very little correlation with how it voted on Prop. 8.

Only 35 percent of St. Francis Wood voters favored the same-sex marriage ban, which is not too far off from the precinct around BART's 24th Street Station. That Mission District precinct is considered the city's most liberal, and 1 in 5 voters there supported the ban.

Campaign smarts

Chinatown also voted differently than its usual politics might suggest, said David Lee, executive director of the Chinese American Voter Education Committee, which has done its own analysis of the results. The neighborhood voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama for president and left-leaning David Chiu for supervisor, but also voted most heavily for Prop. 8.

Lee said immigrants who've been in the city for less than 10 years tended to vote for the ban, while those who've been here longer tended to vote against it. He said the Yes on 8 campaign took out full-page ads in Chinese-language newspapers, which influenced a lot of voters.

"It shaped the opinion of this population that wasn't being communicated to by the No on 8 campaign until very late," he said.

In Visitacion Valley, where more than half of voters supported Prop. 8, many residents told The Chronicle they voted that way for one of two reasons: their religious beliefs or fear that children would learn about gay marriage in school, which was played up in Yes on 8 television commercials. Some in the neighborhood wrongly believed it was written into the measure.

"I don't have anything against gays, but I don't think it's right teaching kids about it in school," said Terrance Powell, 32, who was cutting hair in a barbershop on Leland Avenue. "I have a son, and I'd rather teach him that at home."

Joe Tan, a 40-year-old taxi driver who was picking up his son from the nearby Busy Bee Child Care Center, said his priest told the congregation repeatedly that marriage was between one man and one woman.

"I'm Catholic, and I follow my religion," he said.

Not surprisingly, the precincts with the least amount of support for Prop. 8 - 3 percent yes - were concentrated around the Castro. Steve Gibson, 42 and the director of a gay men's health center, was sipping coffee outside Spike's Coffees and Teas and said he was surprised that a quarter of his fellow San Franciscans voted to take away his right to marry.

"I live in a bubble," he said, shaking his head. He campaigned with the No on 8 side in Albany on election day, but hadn't considered going to neighborhoods in the city. "I wasn't focused on San Francisco."

All of this demographic information can be useful in strengthening outreach for the next time around, but shouldn't be used to blame anybody for Prop. 8's passage, said Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights.

"Our natural impulse when something happens that really hurts us and wounds us deeply is to lash out," she said. "However, there's no one group that can be blamed for that, and there's nothing productive in attempting to assign blame. ... A conversation that blames is a conversation that looks backward and does nothing to build bridges."

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